MBP 17 unibody battery.

This laptop is advertised as having 8 hours battery life, but even when i turn my screen brightness right down and run in power saving mode i can just get 6 hours, is this normal or is there a fault with my laptop?

17"
2.93 ghz c2d
Intel X25 ssd

 

I would think 8 hours was done by the 2.66 system in VERY controlled environment; I think is the 25W 2.66 Ghz P9600 which is used to get 8 hours as oppose to 35W T9550; where as 2.93 is only possibly 35W chip.

 

they say 8 hours on 2.66,screen half of brightness,and browsing inet and doing text editing.are you doing the same tasks?

 

i usually found that apple battery claim is rather conservative. when new, the battery would be able to achieve that kind of task that apple describing and then some.

however, you doesnt have stock config, yeah, i think you should be aiming at 6-7 hour easy. when just browsing the net, while listening to iTunes maybe.

i believe apple uses standard wattage/voltage T-series intel processor in all of their macbook pro range.

 

^lots of people @ macrumors reach more then 8 hours.OP,did you calibrate your battery?

 

Doesn't the battery have to do some cycles first before it can start to stretch out its battery life? Just a thought.

 

Are you sure you set the graphics to better battery life? E.g. you are running on integrated graphics?

Other than that, watch Activity Monitor for apps that use a lot of CPU. I always have iPulse running and during a normal workday I certainly have to force-shut down one or the other stray process.

Also, if your MBP is brand new it might be running Spotlight indexing. What I did is remove the index by adding the boot hard drive to the spotlight "private" items and waiting 10 minutes - this removes the index completely - then removed it from the private items again, which causes Spotlight to re-index the whole drive.

Indexing uses lots of CPU and hard disk so it will drain the battery.

Anyway, I am finding 7 hours pretty realistic during a normal work day so far. Screen at half brightness and WiFi on.

You might also check for a weak WiFi signal, turn off bluetooth, etc.

 

ah yes, i always turn bluetooth off. i usually use my computer with only my mouse connected.

 

Shoot, anything more than 2 hours would make me happy.

 

You aren't going to get anywhere near 8 hours in real world use.

Gizmodo:

Turn the brightness down, cut off all wireless, turn off the discrete GPU, and turn off the backlit keyboard and just let it sit there you MIGHT be able to squeeze 8 hours out of the machine. What is the point in that though?

 

tayb... you dont have an apple do you?

this is movie playback.

there's your two biggest problem right there. they are using discrete graphic and doing photoshop. mac os x is a very efficient operating system. plus, the MBP 17" has humungous battery. do you think any other laptop will fare better under the same condition?

this is very pesimistic. i havent got a new 17 MBP. but with previous apple notebook. the battery life claim is pretty accurate and sometimes i can even exceed their claim.

the O.P doesnt have stock config, he has a fast 2.93ghz instead of the standard config 2.66ghz? the ssd might save a bit of battery life, but i think the bump in having faster cpu drained more.

are you running the gpu in 9400 or 9600? this makes a big difference.

what are you doing with the computer to get 6 hour instead of 7-8.

in all cases. 6 hours is a lot! and i think its normal. try turning the brightness to 50% and see how much difference that makes.

 

Yeah. I do. 15" MacBook Pro.

What more are you expecting? The DVD drive wasn't spinning, all radios were off, screen brightness was at 50%, the keyboard backlight was off, and it only managed 4 and a half hours. 4 and a half hours is incredible but not 8 hours, exactly like I said.

Like I said. "Real world use." This is real world use. 4 hours under real world use is amazing but, again, not 8 hours.

 

I have the new 17" and I think I'm pulling in roughly 6 hoursish (have not gone totally down yet). This totally destroys any PC in terms of regular use.

Btw, someone mentioned calibrating the battery before getting longer battery life, how is this done? Charge all the way, then drain it to 0% on battery? If so, how many times do you need to do this?

 

Thats surprising. Why would MPEG watching drain the battery ? Isnt it a relatvively low CPU task ?

 

calibrating battery should be done very rarely.

usually when you first got your MBP dont turn on your computer, just charge it all the way up, then let it sits for 4-12 hour after it has been fully charge. after that you need to use ur battery till the computer shows it has 0% usable charge remaining, the computer is automatically sleeps when this happens. after the computer goes to sleep, charge your computer, but dont use it, and wait 4-12 hour after it have done charging.

dont do this too often though. maybe 2-3 times a year. if you really want to squeeze the notebook battery, but dont the new 17" has smarter battery?

could be High Def?

 

go to macrumors-lots of people are getting even more then 8 hours

 

Cnet review said 2.66 model lasted 4:14 with 9600m in video drain mode, using 9400m added 30 minutes.

 

I am seeing 7 hours on mine, if I carefully manage power but otherwise work normally. Screen at 1/2, WiFi on, watching out for apps that drain battery, basically.

So when you get your new notebook, spotlight will index the whole drive and destroy any chance of getting a good battery life. When you turn on iPhoto 09 and it starts face detection, it's using 100% CPU and also eating up the battery like there's no tomorrow.

So as long as I watch out for stray processes, I can get 7 hours real world usage. Not bad. 8 is unrealistic for me, I mean who is going to surf the internet for 8 hours. Also, if you run Safari and hit any Flash page it's going to suck battery too...

 

Is it possible to get spotlight to not be indexing your drive? Or is the only solution to not use spotlight?